Starmer facing leadership questions after Mandelson sacking

Sir Keir Starmer is facing mounting pressure from within Labour over his handling of the dismissal of US Ambassador Lord Peter Mandelson. As he prepares to welcome US President Donald Trump on a state visit this week, Labour MPs have begun voicing both public and private unease with the prime minister’s leadership.

Lord Mandelson was sacked last week after Bloomberg published a cache of emails which appeared to show his continued support for convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein following Epstein’s guilty plea to child sex offences.

Richard Burgon, a Labour backbencher, told Radio 4’s Today programme that Sir Keir’s position would be untenable if Labour performed poorly in the upcoming May local elections in Scotland, Wales and parts of England.

Some Labour MPs have grown increasingly outspoken over the prime minister’s judgement and the wider Downing Street inquiry into Mandelson’s appointment. The controversy has come only days after Angela Rayner resigned as deputy prime minister.

Burgon, a long-standing critic of Starmer from the left of the party, said:

“I think it’s inevitable — if May’s elections go as badly as the polls predict, then I expect Starmer will be gone at that time. Right now, it feels like we are years into an unpopular government, not just one year into a Labour administration that replaced the Conservatives. We’re losing seats to the left, and we’ll lose seats to the right too.”

His comments echoed a weekend of briefing by Labour MPs questioning Sir Keir’s leadership. Helen Hayes, Labour MP for Dulwich and West Norwood, told BBC Radio 4’s Westminster Hour that if Mandelson’s dismissal damaged Labour’s prospects in the May 2026 local elections, there would be serious questions about the prime minister’s future.

“I was devastated by Lord Mandelson’s fall, though I felt he should never have been appointed in the first place,” she said.

Downing Street is hoping to reset the agenda after President Trump’s visit and ahead of the Labour Party conference later this month. The government is also preparing the first deportation flight of asylum seekers to France under the “one-in, one-out” agreement signed in July.

A No.10 source said Sir Keir’s forthcoming conference speech would leave MPs “in no doubt” about his values and motivations. But the past fortnight has been dominated by scandal, prompting fears within the parliamentary Labour Party that recent controversies have reignited doubts about his leadership.

Baroness Smith, who served as home secretary under Gordon Brown, told the BBC:

“There will always be people in Labour worried about us going further, faster. It’s difficult at the moment, with so much insecurity, for mainstream politicians to cut through.”

 

She dismissed Burgon’s prediction that Starmer could be ousted next year, telling BBC Breakfast that he had “never backed the prime minister”. While acknowledging Mandelson’s dismissal was “not what we should have expected to hear in the run-up to this week”, she maintained that Sir Keir was “doing a good job”.

The Conservatives, meanwhile, are demanding the release of documents relating to Mandelson’s appointment. Tory MP Alex Burghart pressed the prime minister during PMQs on whether he knew about Mandelson’s links to Epstein before defending him. Burghart later accused Starmer of ignoring warnings, calling it “an appalling decision”.

Sir Keir and his chief of staff Morgan McSweeney have been summoned to explain the appointment process. No.10 has insisted that the prime minister only became aware of the contents of Mandelson’s emails last Wednesday and acted immediately to dismiss him.

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said Starmer’s leadership was now “hanging by a thread”, while Reform UK’s Nigel Farage claimed the affair showed the Labour leader was becoming “ever more distant” from the party’s roots.